Pentax Optio 230 review

I have have been living with my Pentax 230 now for around 12 months after moving over from an Olympus Z900 due to drop damage. The Pentax 230 has been a good camera with image quality average to good (not on par with the Olympus), the controls are easy to use and the up loading of pictures through Win XP is exellent. The night shot mode has been very useful having gained some very nice low noise shots, the only limitation is the maximum shutter time of 4 sec. The multi function mode is very good with a reasonable array of functions, the only notable function however would be the manual white balance, this does allow for the right levels of correction under different light sources, the auto white balance however is near to non-functional. The movie mode having no sound and a 15 second hi-res mode maximum is useless. The flash mode both in fully automatic and multi-function mode provides less than average results, too close and the picture is over exposed to far (more than 4m) and the picture is very underexposed, therefore avoid flash photography with this camera.

On reflection the Pentax 230 is an average camera with just a little over average image quality for a two megapixel system, it offers good user interface and is small and ergonomic, the PC interface is swift and the battery life can be excellent (without flash and continuous LCD viewing). On the down side the flash modes are poor and the limitation of ISO200 really do hold the camera back in low light situations.

I will be moving on to a Canon Powershot A70 for my snap about camera shortly.

Problems:

No problems encountered and Pentax customer service found to be very helpful.